Friday, August 2, 2013

Blight has hit my roma tomatoes

Today was a sad day for me in the garden. I had to prune away a bunch of leaves and branches off one of my roma tomato plants. What my poor roma has is Septoria Leaf Spot.






Because I will not use any pesticides in my garden, the only thing I seem to find to do is trim all the infected parts off and throw it away. I will not put it in my compost. I don't know if it can spread through the compost, but why risk trying. Next year the tomatoes will be moved to a new area of the garden anyway, so this is a good thing.

I only water my tomatoes from the bottom, never over the top. But this year we had a very wet beginning to the summer followed by a very humid few weeks. Now it is very nice and low humidity. But the blight seems to thrive in the wet and humid times. Last year we had blight as well, but it seemed to hit a little later than it did this year.

So far, only two of my 4 roma plants has it, but once one gets it, it seems that all the tomato plants get it. So far none of the others have got it. Going to try to keep it that way. I just need to do something now to protect my growing roma tomatoes from the sunlight. I don't want any sun scorch on them. I want to be able to get some sauce out of these.

I use gloves when I trim up the diseased parts and try not to touch any of the good parts. These gloves are then washed in hot water. I also wash up my pruning shears in soapy water. Not to mention I wash my hands and arms up as well before I go and touch any other parts of my garden.

Any other ideas on how to keep the blight down or away?


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